Openings

[caption id="attachment_6257" align="alignleft" width="470"] [/caption] An exhibit of Iberian Peninsula-inspired paintings by Laguna College of Art + Design students and faculty opens this week at the LCAD Space at Forest & Ocean Gallery in Laguna Beach. “The Majesty of Spain and Portugal” shows the artistic response of participants in last summer’s LCAD summer abroad tour in Madrid, Toledo, Salamanca, Porto and Lisbon. The artists are Amy Bergener, Aaron Brown, Gabriel Castro, Andrea Clarke, Lani Emanuel (whose oil painting Sorolla’s Steps is shown above), Madelyn Foster, Juliette...

02 March, 2015 /

Every arts district needs a Bavarian beer hall serving fancy Old World weiners. Downtown Los Angeles has Wurstküche, San Diego's Gaslamp has the sausage fest known as Sausage Fest, and now, on Santa Ana's Fourth Street, with a soft opening through March, comes Wursthaus. Some kinks are still being worked out, but the food is worth engaging. Order at the front counter — try the smoked cheddar bratwurst on a pretzel bun or go exotic with the hickory smoked wild boar — then look for the...

01 March, 2015 /

In the sculptural work of Portuguese artist Miguel Palma, a cast concrete block might mark the open page of a favorite book. A half-finished Erector set model of the Eiffel Tower might appear alongside a 19th century photograph of the real Eiffel Tower at a similar stage in its construction. Engineering, architecture, history and even biomechanics all provide stimuli for the artist’s toylike imagination. Currently wrapping up a three month residency at 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica, the Lisbon-based artist's recent focus is on...

17 January, 2015 /

With gas prices down and the stock market reaching all-time highs as we approach the end of 2014, no doubt you’re looking for a place to put your excess cash to work. If so, you might want to consider throwing your weight around in the local art market this holiday season. Here are a few options in and around Orange County:   Cal State Long Beach’s 47th Annual Holiday Art Sale runs through this Wednesday, December 10, and features everything from ceramics to printmaking. Something tells us...

08 December, 2014 /

In many areas all over the world, the dirtiest, grimiest places are also the places where the creative people are. Whether it be for low rent, more space, the love of the metropolis, or to invigorate communities through gentrification, sometimes the art is just better in the shitty neighborhoods. With low brow art movements originating in grimy areas of cities like NYC, L.A., Paris, Berlin, etc—Orange County is no different. The grimiest of grimy cities is also our beloved art-hub, the glorious downtown Santa Ana. The...

01 July, 2014 /

illustration by Jared Millar (after Alfred Lutjeans) Museums these days are in the content creation space: From MOCAtv to the obligatory museum blog to the iPad apps put out by the Metropolitan Museum of Art — for better or worse, it’s about more than just publishing a scholarly catalog with a section of color-printed plates. Lately the Laguna Art Museum has entered the multimedia fray with a series of documentary films by Dale Schierholt entitled “California Masters.” The first of these, “Tony DeLap: A Unique Perspective,”...

01 July, 2014 /

Friday, MARCH 7 is the big annual Art Walk anniversary event taking place at the Fullerton Museum Plaza. Fullerton Art venues come together this one night to celebrate local life and art! Fullerton has been voted one of the top 3 best downtown areas in Orange County, and understandably so! With new boutiques, restaurants, bars, galleries and artist dens popping up around every corner, this small downtown area has become one of the best artistic communities in Orange County. Over the past few years, Fullerton has...

28 February, 2014 /

An MFA exhibit currently on view at Cal State Fullerton installs a fantastical world of imagination in the campus' West Gallery, but like a wonderland apparition it's only up for a few days, so if you'd like to see it in person you'll have to visit soon! Tiffany Ma, who over the past few years has been involved with feminist collective performance art as part of the "Guerrila Gowns" project and was in the recent "Rage Bear" show at downtown Santa Ana's GCAC, studied photography...

23 February, 2014 /

By Jared Millar This weekend saw the opening of “STOCK | California” at Coastline College’s Costa Mesa-adjacent gallery which overlooks the (as yet) undeveloped coastal wetlands of the Lower Santa Ana River. Much of the work in the show consists of collage or mixed media, playing with the definition of “stock” that relates to paper stock or card stock. Standout images include Elena Mary Siff’s playful collages and unique book objects and Julie Easton’s striking construction of burned cigarette papers with iridescent paint. Also on exhibit is...

06 February, 2014 /

What do you do if you are a respected gallery owner and a highly anticipated show looks like it won’t come to fruition just one week before the opening? If you're Peter Blake you somehow pull together three solo shows of leading LA-based contemporary artists, within days of the opening event. On Saturday night at the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna Beach ­­it appeared as if this was the plan all along: the shows were as flawlessly put together as we have come to expect...

30 January, 2014 /

The second wave feminists of the 1960s famously coined the phrase "the personal is political". This is true of a vast number of issues, yet often times the very personal impact of political policies gets lost in the furious debates about fiscal impacts of laws or the hypothetical scenarios debated on television talk shows. At a time when immigration issues are hotly debated topic in United States politics, art can be a powerful tool that helps us connect to the personal stories within this multifaceted...

29 January, 2014 /

Surreal, dream-like images inhabited by the solemn countenances of people from a bygone era, set in fantastical landscapes and surrounded by a strange assortment of animals, an arc of bees or random objects; these are the magical images of Maggie Taylor. Taylor creates astonishingly complex digital collages combining original photographs, 19th century daguerreotypes, scanned objects and vintage etchings, to produce imaginative and mysterious photographs. [caption id="attachment_5429" align="aligncenter" width="436"] The Nest[/caption] Walking through the Joanne Artman Gallery in Laguna Beach where her work is currently on display, the...

22 November, 2013 /

Orange County has solid museums, vibrant artists and several local art scenes, yet the cultural footprint of art in the community remains pretty shallow. Residents don’t venture too far from their neighborhood and the idea of a gallery event as part of an interesting night out doesn’t resonate with younger generations. So what’s missing? How can we break through suburban inertia and make the OC art scene something bigger?  Alex Amador, owner of the new 4,500 square foot DAX Gallery, thinks he has the answer. Amador believes...

13 November, 2013 /

For November's Art Walk we feature three galleries that are elevating the Laguna Beach gallery scene (and one honorable mention) by exhibiting art and artists that stand out amongst the typical Orange County fare. Since the galleries are spread out along the coast we chose one  to represent North, Central, and South Laguna (maps and gallery descriptions below). The current theme in Laguna Beach is Art & Nature though the artists we saw fused nature with industry or technology by using found objects, digital manipulation or mixing natural...

11 November, 2013 /

Written by Jared Millar It was around 1976 that Philip K. Dick moved into a third-story condominium on Civic Center Drive just east of downtown Santa Ana, living and writing there until dying of a massive stroke just months before the release of the Ridley Scott-directed Blade Runner, the first in a long run of Hollywood adaptations of his novels and stories ...

02 November, 2013 /

[caption id="attachment_4921" align="alignleft" width="150"] Courtney Conlon[/caption] The 50+ photographs in Courtney Conlon's new show at Cal State Fullerton's Pollack Library are at first glance reminiscent of Ryan McGinley's embrace of nature as a site of freedom, or Wolfgang Tillman's intimate documentation of his friends in real-life situations. However, Conlon is not interested in these kinds of comparisons or definitions, this is made clear by Conlon's stark truisms found spread throughout the opposite side of the gallery from where the majority of the works are hung. Conlon instead...

21 August, 2013 /

When I first came across Brandon Spiegel's art, it reminded me of the stones outside of the ancient burial site of Newgrange, Ireland, densely carved with interlocking spirals. What Spiegel's work captures, that one can feel in that ancient work, is that essential urge and joyfulness in creation. Spiegel's mesmerizing work is especially influenced by the patterns and shapes found within Native American cultural designs. Yet, there is also something decidedly modern about the work, as its psychedelic patterns harken a sense of nostalgia for...

23 July, 2013 /

When I was little I used to spend hours in my family's garden, studying the intricacies of the landscape. Deeply influenced by my love of Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge illustrations, I was looking for mice homes amongst the trees and bushes. What I discovered under rocks and in what seemed like quiet little corners of our yard, was a surprising amount of activity amongst the insects and the birds. Those formative, imaginative years were the first time I began to be in awe of nature...

29 May, 2013 /

It's rare that a band can invoke a real feeling of mysticism in me upon hearing their music. Perhaps this is because I play music and my brain can go directly to understanding song structure and chords; that is, unless the song is coming from another place entirely. There are some bands and composers who are tapping into something on a deeper, more spiritual level that can shut my brain off and immediately propel me into a state of meditative bliss. The multi-cultural band Deleyaman,...

07 April, 2013 /

Currently showing at the Orange County Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Ana, the exhibit Embrace is comprised of artwork by Kim Tucker, Michael Giancristiano and Matjames Metson; curated by Katherine Huntoon. This show illustrates the power of a curator's voice to bind seemingly unrelated works together under one banner.  In the case of Embrace we are asked to notice how each of these artists lovingly and meticulously rescue the abandoned or overlooked to create highly emotional works that become much greater than the sum of their...

28 February, 2013 /